


a risk worth taking

by sadlikeknives



Category: Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 03:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16987131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: The Moor is in Warren's house.Also, Warren and the Moor hooked up one time, in France, in 1944.This is fine.  Everything is fine.





	a risk worth taking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rachael Sabotini (wickedwords)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedwords/gifts).



> Set during _Frost Burned_.

After spending way too many of the worst hours of a life that had included many truly terrible hours in chains in an abandoned winery, Warren finally got home to Kyle, and there was a stranger in their house, and the stranger worked for Cantrip.

It almost went really badly at that point, but Kyle said quickly, "Asil says he's okay," and Warren's heart skipped a beat.

"Asil?" he repeated, aware that his voice was a notch higher than it really ought to be and not able to do anything about it, right that second, because, " _Asil_ is here?"

Someone, he thought Scott, said, "Holy shit."

"Who?" Elliot asked.

"The Moor," Darryl muttered.

"Holy shit."

Darryl was frowning at Warren. "You just went kind of pale. Maybe you should sit down."

"It's not the silver, it's that _Asil_ is in my _house_."

"Yeah, okay, that's fair."

" _Why_ is Asil in my house?"

"'Charles Smith' sent him," Kyle explained, and God help Warren, he had that look in his eyes that said that he was figuring something out. "And he's not here right now, actually, he went with Mercy to get Jesse and they're--"

Adam abandoned his conversation with Agent Armstrong to cut in. "I'm sorry. Did you say that Mercy's out there running around with the Moor?" He sounded like he was working to keep his voice from getting a little high, too, and this time Warren thought, but managed not to say aloud, _Holy shit_. Warren loved one of them and, despite the briefness of their previous acquaintance, liked the other, but there was a duo meant for chaos if ever one had been crafted.

"I couldn't exactly stop them," Ben protested, like someone had been accusing him. Obviously he couldn't have stopped them, Warren thought, but he knew enough to think the same things Warren and Adam were, and to be alarmed about it even as he was helpless to stop his Alpha's wife and the actual Moor from doing anything.

"Okay," Adam said, apparently calm, though if you knew him as well as Warren did it was obvious he was working for every inch of it. "I'm going to go get them and my daughter. Agent Armstrong, good to meet you, we definitely need to talk later. Darryl, keep everybody here until we get back and I figure out what's going on. Warren...deep breaths."

"Workin' on it," Warren said. Adam, he knew, understood where he was right now, even if he was missing some context. Adam already knew what it was to have your home invaded, the one person you were supposed to protect above all others hurt and in danger where you couldn't protect them. Adam had already lived through it once two years ago.

Warren was beginning to wonder if maybe Thanksgiving had it out for their pack somehow, but that might be the lingering silver poisoning and sleep deprivation talking.

"I made one of Adam's people go raid McDonald's," Kyle announced. "It should be here soon, but until then there's—some stuff in the kitchen, not a lot. Ben ate most of the meat we had on hand trying to heal that bullet wound faster. But of course you're welcome to whatever I have."

The prospect of food distracted almost everyone and got them moving further into the house as Adam headed back out the front door, but George lingered back to ask, eyes narrowed, "How are you on a first name basis with the goddamn Moor?"

Warren might have growled. He wasn't proud of it. But it got George to follow everyone else toward the kitchen, and Warren pulled Kyle in close, careful not to hold him too tight with his injured ribs, bent down and buried his face in the crook of his neck and just inhaled the smell of him, here and alive and safe and _his_ , and let his wolf start to calm down. He wanted very much to kiss him, but he wasn't sure how to go about it without causing him pain.

"Warren," Kyle said after a moment, and Warren just waited for whatever he was going to say next, speaking so softly, barely above a breath, because the house was full of werewolves. "Warren, did you really?" 

Warren knew what he was asking, and he just nodded against his shoulder, muttered, "Long time ago."

Kyle turned his head and breathed into his ear, "I'm so proud of you." Warren laughed, when he hadn't thought he had laughter anywhere in him, and Kyle added, "Even if Ben says he's crazy."

"God, I just love you so much. And he is crazy. He was crazier then."

"Wow," Kyle said. "Wow. That's—wow. Details later."

Warren laughed again, because what else could he do? Then he sobered and warned his mate, "I'm a wreck right now."

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us. We'll be okay," Kyle said, and Warren was in that moment breathtakingly glad to be a werewolf, because it meant he knew Kyle thought it true. "We'll be okay," he repeated, then pulled away from their embrace as his cell phone rang, what turned out to be the security personnel alerting him to the arrival of the food. Warren somehow gathered from something he said that he'd ordered catering for lunch, too. Kyle was good at thinking ahead like that. Before he opened the door and let the McMuffins in, he told Warren to, "Wait until you see what Mercy did to the floors in one of the guest rooms." Warren vaguely remembered something about that from the first flurry of activity when they'd arrived; Ben dragging Adam upstairs and Adam coming back looking slightly gobsmacked. The reality turned out to be beyond anything he could have expected, but it did explain a few things.

Asil stuck around until after the funeral, both as Bran's representative and, it turned out, as someone who'd known Peter, once upon a time. He was mostly at Adam's house, which was full of werewolves still on high alert and construction personnel fixing the door and patching holes, and Warren was mostly busy with putting his own house and life back in order and trying to locate Kyle's missing car. The cleaners had to scrub the carpet in the bedroom three times to get Kyle's blood out, and then Warren did it himself, one more time, to make damned sure he couldn't smell it any more. Probably they were still going to end up replacing the carpet, along with the surviving dining room chairs, which Kyle was working on convincing himself he'd already hated, and the tile Mercy had vomited pure silver on. Kyle wanted to have the silver cast into something ironic to give Mercy for Christmas.

Their paths didn't cross much, which might have been partly by Warren's design, but one day, Warren was at Adam's house, attempting to help him deal with some more of the fallout from an entire werewolf pack being kidnapped at the same time, and he stepped outside for some air, and Asil was there, sitting on top of one of the picnic tables. Perhaps he'd been making a phone call, or perhaps he'd just been avoiding the strange pack for a few minutes. He didn't tell Warren to go away, though, so he didn't.

Asil greeted him with, "I woke up with a cat on my head this morning."

"She does that," Warren agreed. "You should have been warned."

"Oh, I was. I was warned before I left Aspen Creek, even, as apparently she has done the same thing to Bran. I just still don't believe it."

"Well. She's Mercy's cat."

"I suppose it's true what they say about pets and their owners," Asil mused. "I like your mate, by the way. He would make a formidable wolf."

"He makes a pretty formidable human," Warren said mildly. The Change was something they'd talked about, of course. To not have would be to have left an elephant in the room. Kyle wasn't really considering it in anything like the immediate future, and Warren was relieved. The odds were too awful for him to be willing to risk Kyle that way, if there was any other way to keep him.

Asil smiled, that bright smile Warren remembered that changed his whole face. "That he does. Has his car been located yet?"

"His seventy thousand dollar car that Adam left in a field somewhere with the keys still in it? Not yet." It was a good thing Warren had seen the state his truck was in before he learned what Adam had done with the Jag, or he would have been a whole lot more annoyed. As it was he was mostly glad it had escaped that fate, even though Adam was paying to have his truck cleaned.

"If it doesn't turn up it will be Adam's responsibility to replace it, you know, both as the person who lost it and as your Alpha." Warren said nothing, because he hadn't known, which he guessed was about half his issues making him assume he was always on his own, and half that it wasn't like anything remotely like this situation had been covered in the pack rules he'd had to memorize when he joined. "I told your Alpha already, as I will tell Bran when I get back to Montana, but you should get Mr. Brooks on the pack roll. Sometimes it's hard to see from the inside, but you all act like he's pack already. That's rare, with a human mate." Asil's voice and expression were both a little odd, a little gentle, when he said, "I thought you should know that."

"Thank you," Warren said, because he didn't know what else to say to that. He already knew that Kyle was something rare and precious, something he had never thought someone like him would ever get to have, but to hear it from the Moor, he who had been the Alpha of Alphas of Iberia for a thousand years...it wasn't nothing.

"They don't know," Asil said then, and Warren was somehow able to follow the subject change. "Do they?"

Warren shrugged. "Not mine to tell."

"No? I am reasonably certain you were _there_..."

"Not just mine," he amended.

"I thought you Texans believed in tales."

"There's a difference between telling tales and telling someone else's business, and I know better than to out someone, especially when I don't know exactly what they are or aren't." Asil looked like Warren had given him something to chew on. Well, good. "I heard you're doing better these days." Warren had never quite bought that Asil came to Aspen Creek to die; had always thought it was more that he needed Bran Cornick to help him fight his demons for a while. No one had asked his opinion, but he was glad to see he'd been something like right.

"I am..." Asil trailed off, considering his answer carefully. "I am trying." That was all any of them were doing, really, Warren thought. "It was fun, though, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah. It was fun. I don't regret it," he added, because he thought that was, somehow, something Asil needed to hear.

"Good," Asil said, and smiled again. "Good. That makes two of us."

The bar had been classy by the standards of that part of France in the fall of 1944, which meant that only some of the windows were blown out, although the rest were boarded up. It was also, Warren had spent some time very carefully determining, the only available option if you were a certain type of man looking for a liaison. It was a risk, to be sure, but sometimes you just reached a point where you couldn't not take the risk any longer. Not that it was going to matter if everyone was going to ignore him, but he couldn't blame them for being wary of strangers.

He didn't even know there was another werewolf in the vicinity until he dropped down onto the bar stool next to him and said, as easy as if they were already in the middle of a conversation, "Well, you're not blond, so you must be from Texas." The stealth was a very rare skill, one he had, in fact, encountered previously, but only on men with the last name of Cornick, and he looked over slow, afraid of what he'd find even though on some level he already knew, somehow, just from the Spanish accent: brown skin, black hair, on the short side by modern standards, slim and beautiful and wildly dangerous.

The first thing he ever said to the actual Moor was the same first thing he said to a lot of werewolves he was quite sensibly trying to avoid a fight with, although he'd maybe never meant it more: "I can leave."

"Why should you? This is no more my territory than it is yours, and I in truth don't have the authority to throw you out of anywhere in France," the Moor said, still breezy, cheerful. "Really, right now Jean doesn't even have the authority to throw you out of anywhere except maybe his immediate presence. Not while you wear that uniform. But you know that. Tell me, did you get drafted or did you volunteer?"

"I should leave," Warren decided. It wasn't like the alcohol was working, anyway, although God, he wished it would.

Before he could move to do so, the Moor's hand snapped out and locked onto his wrist like a vice, and Warren did the only thing he could possibly do and froze. He risked a glance at the other man's face, just enough to see the glint of the long-rumored madness in his eyes. He was a little surprised those eyes were still human, honestly, but thankful for it, considering they were in public. Fuck. He did not want to die tonight, and he definitely did not want to die in this room full of humans who'd done nothing to deserve going down with him, which would be the next logical step once the goddamn Moor went off his, as Warren now realized, very tenuous chain. "You did not answer my question," the Moor said, still quite pleasant.

So he did the only thing he could and answered the question. "I volunteered."

"A wise decision for someone in your position," the Moor said, releasing his wrist and sitting back on his stool, waving off the bartender, who had a bad enough sense of self-preservation that he'd been about to approach them—a surprising trait for someone working in a bar like this in a war zone, but then Warren supposed the Moor was hiding the 'absolutely terrifying' pretty well, if you were human.

It had been a wise decision; Warren didn't need to be told that. The army kept him fed and clothed, gave him the ability to cite the fact that a higher power had ordered him to be wherever he was and leaving at this Alpha or the other's command would require going AWOL, cause a bunch of fuss no one wanted. It gave him structure and a squad, which wasn't a pack but it was something, and a clear goal. Full moons were tricky, but he'd been making it work, and he could do without the actual war, the war was godawful, but—nothing was perfect. 

"Are you looking for Chris?" Warren tried, adding, in case formality would sweeten his disposition, "Sir." Chris wouldn't forgive him, exactly, for throwing him to the wolves—to one wolf, rather—but he'd understand, especially considering the circumstances. "Because he's not here. That is, he is in Europe, but I think he's in Belgium." And if the Moor would just _go there_ , that would be great.

But the Moor just tilted his head, looking slightly confused, and hope died. "Chris?"

"He's blond," Warren explained. He was also, as far as Warren knew, the only other gay werewolf in Uncle Sam's army, which meant they'd been getting mistaken for each other all across Europe, despite the fact that Warren knew Chris, and therefore knew him to be to be several inches shorter than him on top of being blond.

"Oh," the Moor said, waving that off with the same careless motion he'd used on the bartender. "No. I wasn't looking for anyone in particular. No," he said again, and then, his voice changing, "You'll do nicely. If you want."

Warren chanced another look at his face, still _extremely fucking careful_ not to meet his eyes. Despite what he found there, he protested, "You can't be serious."

The Moor raised one eyebrow. "Can't I?"

"You're," Warren tried. "You're not..." He didn't know the right word to use; didn't know which word that had originated as a slur, which was almost all of them, wouldn't offend someone that old and that volatile. And, too, he knew better, deep down, than to try to tell someone that old and that volatile what he was or wasn't.

The Moor leaned in and said, conspiratorial, "I am a thousand years old, is what I am. I was born in a different world." He paused for a moment, watching Warren's face closely as he considered that, before he added, "It is true I prefer women in the general run of things, but...I get bored."

"Bored enough to jump the border and proposition an American."

"Obviously."

There was clearly more to it than that, but it was obvious he wasn't going to tell Warren. Maybe the more was just, 'Also, I'm kind of crazy.' "And if Chastel finds out?"

The Moor shrugged. "What is life without risk?"

It was funny, Warren thought, that it echoed his own thoughts from earlier in the night, but this was a whole other scale of risk. For him, at least. "It's no risk to you. You'll be back over the border, in Spain among your wolves."

"And you," the Moor said, "will still be a member in good standing of the military fighting to liberate his country from a regime even he realizes is truly misbegotten, and still be protected under his understanding with Bran, besides." Warren didn't know anything about anyone's understanding with Bran, but then he supposed he wouldn't. The Moor sat back on his stool, out of Warren's personal space, and he said, "Not that any of that might matter to Jean, depending on the day of the week or the phase of the moon. You're smart, and you're cautious, or you wouldn't still be alive. We both know that, as we both know that 'no' would be the reasonable answer. But it wouldn't be any fun. Think about it." He gestured the bartender over, and after a conversation Warren only sort of followed—his French was frankly terrible—ordered what Warren was pretty sure was "your least bad wine."

Warren waved the man off when he asked if Warren wanted another beer, and said to the Moor, "I thought you were a Muslim."

The Moor smiled, and he looked pleased, somehow. "I am a very bad Muslim. And this," he said, lifting his glass of red, "is as grape juice, to you and I. I can't imagine why you're subjecting yourself to that beer. It smells terrible." It was, but it was also cheap.

 _Walk away_ , Warren's common sense was screaming. _Don't even finish this terrible beer, just walk away._ But he stayed. He stayed, and, when the Moor's glass of wine was about two-thirds gone, found himself saying, "I have to report back in the morning at 0800."

"Don't worry," the Moor said, and he sounded smug, like he knew he'd already won. "I was not planning to maul you." Warren was very, very good at controlling his expression and his posture, but _something_ must have changed, because the Moor asked, "No?"

"It's not," Warren said, and then stopped, because that was not exactly what he meant to say. "No," he said more firmly, because he did not, in fact, like pain with his sex in more than incidental quantities. The Moor was still looking at him, still curious, so he felt compelled to explain, "It's just..." How did you explain it to someone who'd been mated to another werewolf for most of that thousand years? "Sometimes it's frustrating, always having to...be so human." 

The Moor smiled like he understood and said, "My room for the night has stone walls," and, God help him, Warren's mouth went dry and a low thrum of heat ran through him. There would be no holding back with this man. "You know who I am, but my name is Asil, by the way."

"Warren," Warren said, because Asil knew who he was, too, of course, but he didn't know if that extended to his name, since he hadn't recognized Chris's.

"Shall we?" Asil asked, already getting up from the bar.

What the hell, Warren thought. If he was going to take a risk, might as well make it one worth taking. "All right," he said, and stood to follow him, leaving his beer still half-full on the bar. He couldn't blame this on alcohol, nor could it provide him with liquid courage. This was one hundred percent on him.

The sex was everything Warren would have expected it to be, if he had ever had enough imagination to think about fucking a thousand year old werewolf who was way more dominant than him and wasn't quite right in the head, which was to say it was amazing, rough, and honestly a little bit terrifying. He staggered back to his post the next morning almost in a daze, with some bruises already yellowing under his shirt and a bite mark like a claim at the nape of his neck his uniform barely covered, that he had to be careful about not letting anyone see for the few days it lingered before healing up completely, and endured his fellow soldiers' jibes about 'the lucky girl' with the best humor he could dredge up. He was used to that, after all.

He didn't think about it often, to tell the truth. He told Chris what he'd missed out on the next time they crossed paths, just because he had to tell _someone_ and he kind of felt like Chris should know, and every now and then some asshole of a werewolf would say something and Warren would satisfy himself with thinking of the look on their face if he said, _The Moor's queer, and I fucked him,_ with them unable to deny he was telling the truth. He never said it, of course. It wasn't his to tell, and it would have been like striking a match on most situations, besides.

Warren wanted, now that he had the chance, to ask him why the hell it had happened, what turn in his madness had led him to jump the border and proposition an American GI, but he decided not to, for fear it would draw Asil's thoughts back to that madness he was trying so hard to leave behind. For a long time he'd assumed it was some way to tweak Jean Chastel's nose, but as far as he knew, and he'd kept an ear out for whispers, Chastel had never found out, so maybe it had been for the smug satisfaction of knowing he could do such a thing without Chastel ever finding out. That sounded like his style. He didn't suppose it mattered, really. It was seventy years in the past, and here they both were, still alive and still trying, in Adam's backyard under the weak winter sun. That was what mattered, in the end.


End file.
